A bright student missed out on her graduation day after bungling university chiefs wrongly told her she'd failed.

Psychology student Marie Hazlett was devastated to be told she had failed one of her final exams at Sunderland University.

Although university bosses soon realised the paper hadn't been marked properly and discovered she'd actually achieved a 2:1, the 22-year-old had already missed her graduation day.

Marie was told the bad news by her mum while waiting at Newcastle Airport to go on a holiday to Malta. She said: "I was really shocked as I thought I had done well and I felt really guilty because my mum was crying."

On her return, she called her lecturer to find out where she had gone wrong, but was then told about the blunder. She finally got to graduate last month.

She said: "It was a wonderful day, but it lost a bit of magic because my friends were not there to share it with me."